Author: Ms. R.

Stray dogs, “wacky” genes, and a deep affection that inspires “blasphemous” poetry. The plant known as Brassica rapa has quite the history, one that, after decades of debate, is finally emerging. The single species, which humans have turned into turnips, bok choy, broccoli rabe (also known as rapini), and other residents of the produce aisle, began up to 6,000 years ago in Central Asia, most likely in the shadow of the Western Himalayas’ sky-piercing peaks. Earlier this month, Molecular……

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Vincenzo spends every afternoon in Alianello to feed his chickens and “to pass some time.” Before darkness falls, he secures the animals in a natural cave, then he goes home to Alianello Nuovo. The mild-mannered retired garbage man, who lived here from 1976 to 1980, is the last caretaker of a town that was declared not fit to live in after the 1980 earthquake but was definitively abandoned only in 2000. Alianello, a hamlet of the Municipality of Aliano,……

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From 1829 to 1924, the Morris Canal was the primary way to get coal and other industrial goods to New York City from upstate Phillipsburg, New Jersey. While the remaining mouth of the canal now serves as a marina and scenic waterway, in its heyday the Morris Canal was a marvel of engineering, enabling water travel for industrial materials as well as supplies for towns along the way. The canal runs for a total length of 107 miles, and a……

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At the edge of a lush suburban park in Singapore’s Ang Mo Kio neighborhood, a hundred people form a line that snakes around the parking lot. It ends at a registration table where a poster splashed with bright colors announces the event: Kebun Baru Birdsinging Competition. Beneath the shade of a nearby tree, friends chat and offer each other encouragement. In covered bird cages at their feet, zebra doves, white-rumped shamas, red-whiskered bulbuls, Chinese hwamei, and Indian white-eyes will……

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Few dams are as widely despised as the Matilija Dam. Designed in 1947, the 200-foot wall of concrete was constructed in the rugged Matilija Canyon to manage water in the Ojai Valley, despite warnings that sedimentation would render it useless. Since its construction, the Matilija Dam has blocked the passage of steelhead trout to their spawning grounds and trapped sediment from the watershed. Today, the dam has entirely silted what was once a pristine creek and a deep lake……

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Off the beaten path and up on a hill in Port Aransas resides a little white chapel overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. It was self-built in 1937 by Aline B. Carter and used as a personal space for her to meditate and create poetry. Carter was also Poet Laureate of Texas from 1947 through 1949. Originally named the Chapel of Eternal Light, Carter loved the sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico and sunsets over Corpus Christi Bay.  In 1972, John……

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When Christianne Muusers, a Dutch culinary historian, was researching World War II-era cookery, one story stood out. Her elderly neighbor recounted growing up in Nazi-occupied Rotterdam, a city that was all but reduced to rubble by German aerial bombings in 1940 and then by Allied bombings in 1943. By 1944, when he was nine years old, there was only one thing left to eat: tulip bulb soup. “His father had been eating almost nothing but tulip bulbs,” says Muusers,……

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This now abandoned arch bridge was a make-work project constructed in 1936 and opened in 1937 during the Great Depression, located near the small town of Borden, Saskatchewan. The bridge was abandoned in 1985, as a new bridge was constructed just north of the old bridge which allows for traffic movement. Interestingly, the Old Borden Bridge was sold by the provincial government to Orville Middleton for the price of $33,000 with plans to construct an open-air dance hall. Sadly, the……

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Planted by the War Mothers of World War I on October 8, 1919, the oak trees in the largely forgotten Grove of Remembrance in Baltimore’s 745-acre Druid Hill Park continue to thrive to this day. Ultimately, one tree was planted for each state in the union—48 at the time—along with additional trees representing the City of Baltimore, the allies of the United States, and President Woodrow Wilson. The ceremony was described as “one of the most beautiful ever in……

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At one time known by some as the “Cyclopean Bridge,” some form of the now Postbridge Clapper has stood at this location for centuries. The word clapper is thought to derive from the Anglo-Saxon word cleaca, which means stepping stones, or “bridging the stepping stones.” The Dartmoor term for the slabs is posts, which is how Postbridge acquired its name. The bridge may date back as early as the 1300s, as many of the nearby moorland farms had been……

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Approximately equidistant from the cities of Tucson and Phoenix lies Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a park that abuts the border of the United States and Mexico. The park was set aside to protect the rare cactus for which it was named, and hundreds of miles of trails wind through the arid landscape. One of those trails is the Arch Canyon Trail. The official listing for the trail is only 1.2 miles, which takes visitors briefly into a beautiful……

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